View full sizeBabcock & Wilcox Cutaway of an underground nuclear containment building housing two small reactors designed by Babcock & Wilcox. FirstEnergy is studying the feasibility of deploying such reactors in the future. Note the semi-tractor trailer at the top center of the drawing.

FirstEnergy Corp. is interested in buying a new, small nuclear reactor somewhere in its multi-state service area.

Generating just a fraction of the power of FirstEnergy's huge older nuclear power plants, the new reactor would be buried in a containment building 140 feet underground -- with its electrical generator at the surface.

It would cost a fraction of what a new large reactor would cost -- under $2 billion compared to $15 billion, the estimated cost of proposed new plants in the South.

And it is said to be much safer, with many features that would make a catastrophe far less of an issue.

Though FirstEnergy has not committed to buying such a power plant, the Akron-based company said on Wednesday that it had signed an agreement with a subsidiary of global manufacturer Babcock & Wilcox Co. of Charlotte, N.C., to study deploying B&W's small reactor.

The studies will include financial analyses as well as evaluations of various sites.

B&W is now working on the final designs of the reactor. It plans to submit a completed design for the reactor to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of 2013. Licensing could take several years, but the NRC has already begun gearing up to handle what it thinks will be an influx of competing designs for small reactors.

B&W's Barberton facility is involved in the design of the small reactor, and the reactor could even be built there, said Chris Mowry, president of the B&W division that would produce the small reactor.

"We have team of engineers there doing design works for us," he said. "We are certainly looking at that site" for manufacturing.

Other Greater Cleveland companies would also be involved in manufacturing components of the reactor system, he said.

View full sizeBabcock &WilcoxStanding about 75 feet tall with a girth of about 14 feet, Babcock & Wilcox's new modular nuclear reactor would generate about one-sixth of the electricity a larger reactor produces. But it would be safer, partly because it would be buried in a containment building 140 feet underground. And it would cost a fraction of the price of a new large reactor.

The mPower reactor would generate just 180 megawatts -- compared to the 900 to 1300 megawatts that FirstEnergy's old nuclear reactors generate. One megawatt (1 million watts) is enough electricity to power about 800 homes.

Babcock & Wilcox is already working closely with another utility, the Tennessee Valley Authority, to deploy two of these reactors at the TVA's Clinch River site, a location once made famous when the discovery of a tiny rare fish, the snail darter, temporarily derailed TVA's plans to build a dam.

B&W is not the only company trying to develop small nuclear power plants.

Three other companies, including Westinghouse, are racing to perfect small designs that are downsized versions of the giant reactors now in place.

Another seven companies are trying to perfect even more exotic designs, both for U.S. and overseas markets. Safety, with less complex safety systems, and lower cost are the goals.

Several companies, including B&W, are locked in a contest now for U.S. Department of Energy funding to speed up research and development. The first of the DOE research and development grants totaling $452 million over the next five years are expected by the end of the summer.

"The small reactor is not a substitute, but is a complement to the larger reactors," said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group. "We do know that the Department of Defense installations are interested in this, in having autonomy from the grid. Also it's a clean source of power.

The small reactors are called "modular" reactors because several of the little power plants could be purchased separately as "modules" and eventually connected to produce as much power as a giant reactor.

B&W hopes to sell its mPower reactors in pairs, or "twin-packs," said Mowry.

The B&W reactor is 75 feet long and about 14 feet wide, he said, or about the size of a rail tanker car. It would not need refueling for four or more years - more than twice the refueling schedule of the older reactors.

The mPower would be completely factory built and then installed at a utility's site -- unlike the old-fashioned "stick-built" nuclear power plants that invariably racked up enormous cost overruns.

B&W thinks the in-house manufacturing will produce far better reactors and without the cost overruns.

"Our goal is to be competitive," said Mowry. "A utility would put this in without subsidies as part of their normal fuel risk. The idea to make this a low-risk, carbon-free source of power on a utility scale.